Writing in The Washington Post on February 27, 2011,
Rachel Bronson asked: "Could the next Mideast uprising happen in Saudi Arabia?"
Her answer was: " The notion of a revolution in
the Saudi kingdom seems unthinkable."

However, On September
30 the next year, the senior foreign policy fellow at the Saban Center for
Middle East Policy Bruce Riedel concluded that the "revolution in Saudi Arabia
is no longer unthinkable."

To preempt such a possibility, the kingdom in March 2011, in a "military" move to curb the tide of the Arab popular
uprisings which raged across the Arab world from sweeping to its doorsteps, the
kingdom sent troops to Bahrain
to quell similar popular protests.

That rapid reactive
Saudi military move into Bahrain
heralded a series of reactions that analysts describe as an ongoing Saudi-led
counterrevolution.

Amid a continuing succession process in Saudi Arabia,
while major socioeconomic and political challenges loom large
regionally, the kingdom is looking for security as far away as China, but
blinded to the shortest way to its stability in its immediate proximity, where
regional understanding with its geopolitical Arab and Muslim neighborhood would
secure the kingdom and save it a wealth of assets squandered on unguaranteed guarantees.

In his quest
to contain any fallout from the "Arab Spring," Saudi King Abdullah Ben Abdel-Aziz selectively
proposed inviting the kingdoms of Jordan and Morocco to join the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf,
known as the Gulf Cooperation
Council (GCC), leading The Economist on May 19, 2011 to joke
that the organization should be renamed the "Gulf Counter-Revolutionary Club." For sure including Iraq
and Yemen
would be a much better addition if better security was the goal.

Ahead of US President Barak Obama's
official visit to the kingdom by the end of this March, Saudi Arabia was
looking " forward to China as an international
magnate with a great political and economic weight to play a prominent role in
achieving peace and security in the region," according to Defense Minister and
Crown Prince Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al Saud who was in Beijing from March 13 to
16 "to enhance cooperation with China to protect peace, security and stability
in the region." He was quoted by a statement from the Saudi Press Agency .

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Prince Salman was in Japan
from 18-21 last February, hopefully to deepen bilateral cooperation
"in various fields." On February 26, India
and Saudi Arabia
signed an agreement to strengthen co-operation in military training, logistics
supplies and exchange of defense-related information. On last January 23, Indonesia and Saudi Arabia signed a defense cooperation agreement, the first of its kind.

While a strong Saudi-Pakistan defense
partnership has existed for long, it has been upgraded recently. Princes
Salman and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal arrived in Pakistan on
February 15. Pakistani army chief General Raheel Sharif was in Saudi Arabia
earlier. Director
of South Asia Studies Project at the Middle East Media Research Institute,
Washington DC, Tufail
Ahmad, wrote on this March 11 that "the upswing in the relationship marks
a qualitative change," hinting that the kingdom could be seeking Pakistan's
nuclear capabilities to "counter a nuclear-capable Iran" despite Islamabad's
denial, which "is not reliable." The kingdom is moving "to transform itself as
a regional military power," Sharif wrote.

On this March 14, the Financial Times
reported that Saudi Arabia has given $1.5 billion (Dh5.5 billion) to Pakistan. In
February a senior Pakistani intelligence official told the Financial Times that Saudi Arabia was seeking "a large
number of [Pakistani] troops to support its campaign along the Yemeni border
and for internal security." The official confirmed that Pakistan's agreement, during Prince Salman's visit,
to support the establishment of a "transitional governing body" in Syria
was an important aspect of the deal.

On this March
5, the kingdom led two other members of the six-member GCC, namely the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, to withdraw their ambassadors from Qatar,
risking the survival of the GCC.

Hunting
two French and Lebanese birds with one shot, the kingdom early last January
pledged a $3 billion royal grant, estimated to be two-time the entire military
budget of Lebanon,
to buy French weapons for the Lebanese Army.

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The Saudi
multi-billion dollar support to the change of guards in Egypt early last July
and the kingdom's subscription to Egypt's make or break campaign against the
Muslim Brotherhood (MB) inside and outside the country following the ouster of
the MB's former president Mohammed Morsi reveal a much more important Saudi
strategic and security unsigned accord with Egypt's new rulers.

On the outset
of the so-called "Arab Spring," the kingdom also bailed out Bahrain and the
Sultanate of Omen with more multi-billion petrodollars to buy the loyalty of
their population.

More
multi-billion petrodollars were squandered inside the country to bribe the
population against joining the sweeping popular Arab protests.